Colin Dwyer

Zhou Youguang, the inventor of a system to convert Chinese characters into words with the Roman alphabet, died Saturday at the age of 111. Since his system was introduced nearly six decades ago, few innovations have done more to boost literacy rates in China and bridge the divide between the country and the West.

How much criticism can a single half-hour episode of television sustain before it gets the ax?

On Friday, we may have gotten our answer: An episode of the British comedy series Urban Myths — which drew widespread complaints for featuring the white actor Joseph Fiennes as Michael Jackson — has been canceled by Sky TV before it could air.

Maracanã Stadium has been a fixture of the Rio de Janeiro skyline for decades. Opened just in time to play host to Brazil's heartbreak in the 1950 World Cup, it underwent massive renovations to host ... well, more heartbreak for Brazilians in the 2014 World Cup.

It has spent some 175 years homeless, wandering many paths of taxonomy without a single branch to call its own. In the time since it was first described, this now-extinct, cone-shaped sea creature has known a number of presumed families — from mollusks to designations much more nebulous — but the tiny hyolith never quite fit in any of them.

It was on a routine patrol in 1986 that Steven McDonald's life took a dramatic turn. McDonald, who was just two years into his service with the New York Police Department, and his partner confronted a trio of boys in Central Park. Within seconds, one of those teens drew a handgun and shot McDonald three times.

That shooting left him paralyzed from the neck down. Yet his life was arguably shaped as much by those three bullets as by the three words he famously expressed afterward: "I forgive him."

Just days after the death of its most famous star, SeaWorld has begun the process of putting its headliner show to rest.

The theme park's San Diego location is delivering its final One Ocean show on Sunday, ending the series of orca performances that elicited outrage after the 2013 documentary Blackfish. The principal subject of that documentary, an orca named Tilikum, died Friday at the age of 36.

Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Iran's fourth president and a towering figure in the country, has died at the age of 82, according to Iranian state media.

For decades, the Shiite Muslim cleric played an outsize role in Iranian politics. An aide to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the country's 1979 revolution, Rafsanjani served on the Revolutionary Council that helped transform the newborn Islamic Republic from a monarchy into a theocracy.

Several bombings tore through Iraq's capital city just hours apart on Sunday. The attacks in and around Baghdad, which are believed to have primarily targeted Shiite Muslims, killed more than two dozen people and left dozens more wounded.

Early Sunday in Sadr City, a predominantly Shiite suburb, Iraqi government officials say an attacker drove a car rigged with explosives into a large fruit and vegetable market.

A two-day mutiny among soldiers in the Ivory Coast has come to an end, according to the country's president. Alassane Ouattara announced Saturday that the government has struck a deal with the mutineers.

The revolt, which began Friday in Bouaké, the country's second-largest city, soon spread to cities and towns nationwide. By Saturday, parts of the Ivory Coast's largest city, Abidjan, were on lockdown, as gunfire was reported at the military base on the edge of the city.

One day after five people were killed at an airport in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., more details are coming to light on the suspected gunman: Esteban Ruiz Santiago, a U.S. military veteran.

The 26-year-old was arrested by police shortly after the shooting began at the airport's baggage claim area. He is now at a Broward County jail, where authorities say he is being held on suspicion of murder. Authorities say there is no indication that Santiago worked with anyone else in planning or executing the attack.

Yet when Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen touches down in Houston, after setting out from Taiwan on Saturday, China's attentions will be squarely trained on what she does during her brief stopover. The stop in Houston, en route to Tsai's diplomatic visit in Central America, has taken on new significance since her December phone call with President-elect Donald Trump unsettled decades of U.S. policy toward China.

A blast has torn through the Syrian town of Azaz, killing at least 43 people, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The U.K.-based activist group says the explosion was caused by a fuel tanker rigged with a bomb, which went off outside a courthouse in the rebel-held town on Syria's border with Turkey.

It's a fantasy that goes back centuries: a message in a bottle, carried ashore from far-off lands. Authors, artists and children alike have dreamed of such a gift from the sea.

This time, though, it's not a bottle that washes ashore. It's eggs — thousands of little toy eggs.

That's what happened on the German island of Langeoog this week. Perched just off the North Sea coast, it found itself buffeted by an invasion of multicolored plastic eggs — much to the delight of local children, because the eggs contained toys.